The Hanover Institute for Public Policy
Data Reportby The Hanover InstituteNovember 9, 2026Updated November 10, 2026

Can a Jewish state also be a pluralist one?

Israel’s Supreme Court in 2000 found no contradiction between Jewish statehood and equality. The statutes and scholarship are read beside it.

IsraelBasic LawsEqualityPluralismJewish State
Can a Jewish state also be a pluralist one?

Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, held on 8 March 2000 in HCJ 6698/95 Ka’adan that “There is, therefore, no contradiction between the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and between the absolute equality of all of its citizens.” The statute book that Court reads also holds a 2018 Basic Law that makes national self-determination in the state “exclusive to the Jewish People,” and a 1992 Basic Law on human dignity whose English text uses the word “equal” zero times. Can a state belong to one people and still treat every citizen as an equal? The question is concrete for the 2.157 million Arabs counted by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics in April 2026, 21.1% of the population on the Israeli state’s own preliminary count.

Key Findings

  • Israel’s Supreme Court held on 8 March 2000 that Jewish-state values do not justify “discrimination by the State between its citizens, on the basis of religion or nationality.” The Court declared unlawful a state land allocation for a Jews-only settlement, and its remedy obliged the State only to consider the petitioners’ request (Israeli Supreme Court, 2000).
  • Clause 1(c) of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People makes the realization of national self-determination in the state “exclusive to the Jewish People” (Knesset, 2018). Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty contains zero occurrences of “equal” in the Knesset’s unofficial English text (Knesset, 1992, amendments through 2022).
  • The Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel’s official statistics bureau, counted 2.157 million Arabs on its own preliminary count, 21.1% of 10.244 million, on the eve of Independence Day 2026. The share a year earlier was 20.9% (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2026; Central Bureau of Statistics, 2025).
  • A statement presented to President Woodrow Wilson on 4 March 1919, put at 300 signers by two contemporaneous wire reports, called a “distinctively Jewish State” “utterly opposed to the principles of democracy” (Berkowitz, Jastrow, Senior and the signers, 1919).
  • Sammy Smooha classified Israel in 1997 as an “ethnic democracy,” and Oren Yiftachel classified it in 1999 as an “ethnocracy.” Ruth Gavison recommended on 19 November 2014 against further constitutional anchoring at that stage (Smooha, 1997; Yiftachel, 1999; Gavison, 2015).

Has Israel’s highest court found Jewish statehood incompatible with equality?

No. Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, held on 8 March 2000 in HCJ 6698/95 Ka’adan that “There is, therefore, no contradiction between the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and between the absolute equality of all of its citizens.” The holding came from a panel of five led by President A. Barak, and it rests on Israeli law.

The facts were narrow. The Israel Lands Administration allocated state land in the Eron valley to the Jewish Agency. The Agency then established the communal settlement of Katzir through a cooperative society, and that society granted membership only to Jews. An Arab couple asked to build a home there. In paragraph 31 the Court wrote, “we do not accept the approach that the values of the State of Israel, as a Jewish state, would justify, on the level of a general purpose, discrimination by the State between its citizens, on the basis of religion or nationality.”

The Court then closed the indirect route. Paragraph 34 reads, “The State cannot escape its legal obligation to respect the principle of equality by using a third party that adopts a discriminatory policy. What the State cannot do directly, it cannot do indirectly.” Paragraph 38 adds that “Discrimination does not lose its discriminatory character, even if it is being carried out through the Jewish Agency.” The operative declaration in paragraph 40A states that the State “was not permitted, by law, to allocate state land to the Jewish Agency, for the purpose of establishing the communal settlement of Katzir on the basis of discrimination between Jews and non-Jews.”

The remedy was narrower than the declaration. Under paragraph 40B, the State had to consider the couple’s request “on the basis of the principle of equality” and decide “with appropriate speed, whether it can enable the petitioners, within the framework of the law, to build a house.” The Court did not order their admission to Katzir. It left open whether the State “can” enable it.

Justice Y. Kedmi dissented, and the ground of his dissent matters. He concurred with President Barak’s “fundamental approach regarding the position of the value of equality.” He would have given a declaration only, on the view that the judgment “is forward-looking and does not provide grounds for re-examining acts performed in the past.” The recorded result was a majority decision to make the order nisi absolute.

The judgment is a statement of Israeli law about the State’s duties toward its own citizens in the allocation of land. It contains no count and no measurement. The equality it enforces is a rule the Court derived, and its source in the statute book is the subject of a later section.

Who has argued a Jewish state contradicts democracy, and since when?

On 4 March 1919, Representative Julius Kahn of California presented President Woodrow Wilson with a Statement to the Peace Conference. The statement was drafted by Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, Professor Morris Jastrow and Max Senior, and it protested “a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy.” The argument that Jewish statehood contradicts democracy is therefore more than a century old, and several of its earliest authors were Jewish.

The sentence comes from the statement’s Objection 4, as reproduced from the drafting committee’s own printed copy (Levitas, 1962). It reads in full: “Though these grave difficulties be met, still we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World’s Peace Conference to establish.” The closing asked that Palestine be “governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent,” and added, “We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State.”

The document states no signatory count. Its text says only “we, the undersigned citizens.” The Douglas Daily International reported on 5 March 1919 that “Three hundred prominent American Jews signed a petition,” and the Wisconsin Weekly Blade gave the same figure of 300 on 15 March 1919. The count was still moving after presentation: Levitas (1962) records Rabbi Leo M. Franklin of Detroit deciding to sign on 22 April 1919. The statement also claimed to voice “the opinion of the majority of American Jews born in this country.” That claim appears inside an advocacy petition and is not a measurement.

Two years earlier, E. S. Montagu, Secretary of State for India, wrote War Cabinet paper G.T. 1868, dated 23 August 1917, “as the one Jewish Minister in the Government.” Its purpose clause reads: “I have chosen the above title for this memorandum, not in any hostile sense, not by any means as quarrelling with an anti-Semitic view which may be held by my colleagues, not with a desire to deny that anti-Semitism can be held by rational men, not even with a view to suggesting that the Government is deliberately anti-Semitic ; but I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic in result and will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world.”

The paper answers a draft. Lord Rothschild’s letter was dated 18 July 1917, and Montagu wrote that “my protest comes too late.” The Balfour Declaration was sent on 2 November 1917, ten weeks after the paper, in wording Montagu had not seen. His objection concerned result, not intent, and both the 1919 signers and Montagu framed it in terms of the citizenship of Jews in other countries.

What equality did Israel’s founding declaration promise in 1948?

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, read on 14 May 1948 and signed by the 37 members of the People’s Council, declares “THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL.” In the Knesset’s English text, the same document pledges “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex.” The founding instrument therefore places national character and equal rights in one text.

The equality clause continues. The state “will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.” A separate paragraph appeals “to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

There are two official English renderings of the equality sentence, and they differ on the operative word. The Knesset publishes “all its citizens.” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes “all its inhabitants.” Both are Israeli government publications and both translate a Hebrew original. The difference bears on the pluralism question, because a pledge to citizens covers a narrower population than a pledge to inhabitants. Quotations here use the Knesset text.

The Declaration also carries its own historical chain: the First Zionist Congress of 1897, the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, the League of Nations Mandate, and the UN General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947, which it calls a recognition that “is irrevocable.” These recitals are the founding text’s own narrative and are reported as what the Declaration asserts.

The Declaration’s legal standing has itself been weighed. Ruth Gavison, commissioned by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni on 12 August 2013, recommended on 19 November 2014 that the Declaration be left as it is, rather than exposed to a campaign to enact it as a Basic Law “in totally different social and political circumstances” (Gavison, 2015). Her recommendation was not adopted as government policy, and no government acted on it. As the next section shows, the Basic Law on human dignity refers to the Declaration’s principles without enacting its equality sentence.

Does Israel’s Basic Law on human dignity contain an equality clause?

No. In the Knesset’s unofficial English translation of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, adopted in 1992 and published with amendments through 1 May 2022, a case-insensitive search of the full text returns zero occurrences of “equal,” “discrimin,” “religion,” “race” or “nationality.” The rights the law enumerates are dignity, life, body, property, personal liberty, exit and entry, and privacy.

The Knesset states in the document’s second line that the translation is unofficial, and it directs readers to the Hebrew for the operative law. The search also returns no freedom of expression, assembly or worship. This absence is a fact about the text. It is not a finding about how the State treats anyone.

The purpose clause, numbered 1a in the Knesset text, reads: “The purpose of this Basic Law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order to embed the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, in a basic law.” Section 1 provides that rights “shall be upheld in the spirit of the principles included in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.” Section 1 does not incorporate the Declaration and does not enact its equality sentence. It is the law’s only textual route to the Declaration’s pledge.

Section 8 permits limits on the enumerated rights “by means of a law that corresponds to the values of the State of Israel, which serves an appropriate purpose, and to an extent that does not exceed what is required.” Israeli state bodies render this clause in more than one English form, so the wording quoted here is the Knesset’s own. Section 10 reads: “This Basic Law shall not affect the validity of any law that existed prior to the inception of the Basic Law.” That sentence leaves in force the 1950 Law of Return, the 1953 marriage law and the 1970 amendment discussed below.

The equality rule that governed Ka’adan therefore did not come from this statute. The Court reached it through the values of the State and the Declaration of Independence, so in Israel equality operates as judge-made doctrine rather than as an enumerated right. The judgment also cites the purpose clause as “s. 1,” while the Knesset now numbers it 1a.

Source: Montagu, 1917; Berkowitz, Jastrow, Senior and the signers, 1919; Provisional Government of Israel, 1948; Knesset, 1950 and 1970; Knesset, 1953; Knesset, 1992; Israeli Supreme Court, 2000; Knesset, 2018.

To whom does the 2018 Nation-State Law grant self-determination?

To the Jewish People alone. Clause 1(c) of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, adopted by the Knesset in 2018, provides: “The realization of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.” The Knesset labels its English translation of the law unofficial.

Clause 1(b) sets out the premise: “The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.” Clause 4 addresses language. Clause 4(a) states that “Hebrew is the language of the State,” clause 4(b) that “Arabic has a special status in the State,” and clause 4(c) that nothing in the article “shall compromise the status given to the Arabic language in practice, before this basic-law came into force.” Clause 7 states that “The State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.” Clause 3 names “The complete and united Jerusalem” as the capital, and clause 5 opens the state “to Jewish immigration, and the ingathering of the exiles.”

The law contains no equality clause and no clause on individual rights. As with the 1992 law, that is a fact about the text and not a finding about treatment. The Nation-State Law’s wording operates at a different level from the Ka’adan holding. Clause 1(c) allocates a collective right of national self-determination, while Ka’adan paragraph 31 concerns how the State treats individual citizens. Neither text, read on its own terms, answers the other.

The two models named in the question can be read directly from the record. The 1919 statement asked for a government “recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent.” The 2018 Basic Law writes one people’s self-determination into constitutional text. Smooha (1997) described a system in which “the democratic principle” and “the ethnic principle” operate together, the first “making for equal rights and equal treatment of all citizens,” the second “privileging the ethnic majority.” Clause 1(c) and Ka’adan paragraph 31 each give enacted or judicial form to one of those two principles.

Who may immigrate as of right under the Law of Return?

Every Jew. Section 1 of the Law of Return, passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950, reads in the English text the Knesset publishes: “Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.” The translator’s note defines oleh as “a Jew immigrating, into Israel.” The text quoted is the 1950 law as originally enacted.

The 1950 law did not define “Jew.” The definition came with Amendment No. 2, passed on 10 March 1970. Section 4B provides: “For the purposes of this Law, ‘Jew’ means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.” The definition is bounded by its opening words, “For the purposes of this Law.” The same amendment inserted section 3A(b) into the Population Registry Law, which applies “the same meaning as in section 4B” to the Registry.

Section 4A does separate work. It extends the rights of a Jew under the law to “a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew,” none of whom need be Jewish. It excludes “a person who has been a Jew and has voluntarily changed his religion.” 4B defines who is a Jew, and 4A extends the same rights to people who are not Jews.

It is often said that the Law of Return gives Jews a route into the country that is unavailable to non-Jews on the same terms. The statute’s text bears that out: it confers the right on Jews and on the relatives listed in 4A, and no clause confers an equivalent right on any other group. The Supreme Court’s account of how this relates to equality comes from Ka’adan paragraph 31: “members of the Jewish nation were granted a special key to enter (see the Law of Return-5710-1950), but once a person has lawfully entered the home, he enjoys equal rights with all other household members.” On the Court’s reading, the preference governs entry, and equality governs life after entry.

The statute itself contains no figures. On the Central Bureau of Statistics’ own count, over 3.5 million immigrants have arrived since 1948, about 1.68 million of them (47.8%) since 1990 (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2026). The Bureau does not attribute that total to a particular statutory route.

Can two Jews marry outside religious law inside Israel?

Not under the statute as enacted. Section 2 of the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law, passed by the Knesset on 26 August 1953, provides: “Marriages and divorces of Jews shall be performed in Israel in accordance with Jewish religious law.” Section 1 gives rabbinical courts “exclusive jurisdiction” over the marriage and divorce of Jews in Israel.

The two sections do different work. Section 1 is a rule about jurisdiction. It reads: “Matters of marriage and divorce of Jews in Israel, being nationals or residents of the State, shall be under the exclusive jurisdiction of rabbinical courts.” Section 2 is the substantive rule about how such marriages are performed. Section 6 gives the rules force. Where a rabbinical court has ordered a husband to grant a letter of divorce, a district court may, after six months and on the Attorney General’s application, “compel compliance with the order by imprisonment.”

The law is narrower than its reputation. Every operative section speaks “of Jews,” and section 2 says “in Israel.” The statute legislates nothing for Muslims, Christians or Druze, whose courts sit under other instruments. It says nothing about marriages performed abroad, and it contains no provision on interfaith marriage. It also defines “Jew” nowhere and makes no cross-reference to section 4B of the Law of Return. The wording “Jewish religious law” is the statute’s own, and the implementing minister is the Minister of Religious Affairs. Section 9 preserves article 51 of the Palestine Orders in Council, 1922 to 1947, by name, so the 1953 law sits on a framework inherited from the Mandate rather than replacing it.

The pluralism question therefore runs inside the Jewish population as well as between groups. Section 2 applies by its terms to every marriage of Jews in Israel. The statute draws no distinction according to the couple’s own religious practice or denomination, and it offers no civil alternative for Jewish couples.

The text quoted is the law as enacted in 1953. It has been amended since, and this version is not the consolidated law in force. Section 10 of the 1992 Basic Law leaves this pre-1992 statute untouched.

How many Israeli residents fall outside the Jewish majority?

The Central Bureau of Statistics counted 2.157 million Arabs, 21.1% of a preliminary population of 10.244 million, on the eve of Israel’s 78th Independence Day, with figures current to 22 April 2026. This is the Israeli state’s own official count. The Bureau’s Arabs category covers Moslems, Arab Christians and Druze.

The rest of the count is less simple. The Bureau reports 7.790 million (76%) as “Jews and Others.” “Others” covers non-Arab Christians, members of other religions, and people registered as not classified by religion, and the 2026 release does not break that group out. The population outside the Jewish majority is therefore larger than the Arab total, by an amount this release does not separate. Foreigners account for 296,000 (2.9%), on data for the end of 2025. They are residents in the count, not citizens.

A year earlier, on the Bureau’s own 2025 count, Arabs numbered 2.114 million, 20.9% of 10.094 million (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2025). Over the 11.75 months to April 2026, the population grew by 146,000, or 1.4%. The Israeli population accounted for 110,000 of that growth and foreigners for about 36,000.

Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, 2026, the Israeli state’s own preliminary count.

These figures come with three limits. Both releases are preliminary and based on the 2022 census. From 2023 onward, the estimates include foreigners recorded as entering from 2008 with no record of exit, so the series does not continue directly from earlier years. The Bureau also states that its 2026 growth total does not equal the difference between its component figures. On every reading, the question of equal standing concerns roughly one resident in five.

How do Smooha, Yiftachel and Gavison answer the compatibility question?

Sammy Smooha, writing in Israel Studies in 1997, classified Israel as an “ethnic democracy,” defined as “a system that combines the extension of civil and political rights to individuals and some collective rights to minorities, with institutionalization of majority control over the state.” Oren Yiftachel, writing in Constellations in 1999, classified Israel as an “ethnocracy,” which he treats as a regime type distinct from democracy.

Smooha separates his type from three others. It is not liberal, because the state recognizes ethnic difference. It is not consociational, because the minority has neither autonomy nor a share of power. It is not Herrenvolk, because citizenship extends to all. His own face-to-face survey of September to October 1995, covering 1,200 Arab citizens inside the pre-1967 borders and excluding East Jerusalem, measured how that minority viewed the arrangement then. The figures date from 1995 and describe attitudes, not causes.

Source: Smooha, 1997, reporting his own 1995 survey.

Yiftachel defines ethnocracies as states that “maintain a relatively open government, yet facilitate a non-democratic seizure of the country and polity by one ethnic group” (Yiftachel, 1999). He builds the category on three forces: settler society, ethno-nationalism and the “ethnic logic” of capital. The publisher of his 2006 book describes the regime as “neither democratic nor authoritarian, with rights and capabilities depending primarily on ethnic origin and geographic location” (Yiftachel, 2006). The book’s chapter 4 is titled “Debating Israeli Democracy.”

Gavison addressed the constitutional question rather than the classification. On 19 November 2014 she recommended refraining “at this stage” from further constitutional anchoring of the state’s vision. If such a law were enacted anyway, the Hebrew text of her recommendations says it should be “a vision law and not a nation law” (Gavison, 2015). Her position was a recommendation about timing, not a categorical objection.

All three works read the same statute book. One classifies the result as a democracy, one as a regime type outside democracy, and one advised against writing more national character into constitutional text. The scholarly disagreement is itself a finding of the record.

Methodology and limitations

The evidence falls into four source types. The first is primary and official records. These include the Supreme Court judgment in HCJ 6698/95 (2000), read in the English text of the Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project; the 1948 Declaration in the Knesset’s English text; Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, both in English translations the Knesset labels unofficial; and the Law of Return (1950, amended 1970) and the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law (1953). The last two were read as page scans from the English series Laws of the State of Israel hosted by the Knesset, which are marked neither official nor unofficial. In every case the Hebrew governs. The 1950 and 1953 texts are quoted as enacted and are not the consolidated law. The word counts for the 1992 Basic Law come from a case-insensitive search of the Knesset PDF on 19 August 2026.

The second type is official statistics. The Central Bureau of Statistics Independence Day releases for 2025 and 2026 are preliminary, based on the 2022 census, and are the Israeli state’s own count. The third type is historical primary documents. The 1919 Statement to the Peace Conference survives in no located scan of the printed original. It was read in two reproductions, the Denver Jewish News of 19 March 1919 and Levitas (1962). Neither is complete, and the quotations of its objections follow Levitas. The figure of 300 signers comes from two 1919 wire reports, not from the document itself. The quotations from Montagu’s War Cabinet paper of 23 August 1917 are from page 1, read from the image published by The National Archives (CAB 21/58, folio 218).

The fourth type is scholarship. Smooha (1997) and Yiftachel (1999) are peer-reviewed. Yiftachel (2006) is a university-press book. Stopler (2013) is peer-reviewed. Gavison (2015) is a government-commissioned review that was never adopted. These works classify and interpret. The only measurement among them is Smooha’s 1995 survey, which is dated, limited to Arab citizens inside the pre-1967 borders, and correlational. Whether Israel is an ethnic democracy or an ethnocracy remains contested in this literature, and the competing works are presented with their own definitions. No current English text of Israel’s two ordinary anti-discrimination statutes was located on an Israeli state host in a search on 10 September 2026, so their enacted grounds appear here only as they stand in Hebrew.

Conclusion

Can a state belong to one people and still treat every citizen as an equal? Israel’s own record answers in more than one voice. Its highest court said yes on 8 March 2000, finding “no contradiction” between Jewish-state values and the “absolute equality” of citizens. Its constitutional text says something more complicated.

The pattern is consistent across the instruments. The 1948 Declaration promised equality “irrespective of religion, race or sex” in the same document that declared a Jewish state. The 1992 Basic Law that would carry that promise contains the word “equal” zero times and leaves pre-1992 statutes in force. The 2018 Basic Law makes self-determination “exclusive to the Jewish People.” The Law of Return opens entry as of right to Jews and their listed relatives, and the 1953 marriage law places every marriage of Jews in Israel under religious law. On the Israeli state’s own preliminary count, 2.157 million Arabs, 21.1% of the population, live under this arrangement. Smooha calls it an ethnic democracy, and Yiftachel calls it an ethnocracy.

The objection to Jewish statehood as undemocratic is older than the state; it was put in writing by Jewish signers in 1919 and by a Jewish Cabinet minister in 1917. What the record sharpens is a narrower question. In Israel, equal citizenship rests on a judgment, a declaration and the reasoning of judges, while national preference rests in enacted Basic Law. A pluralist society can be built on either kind of foundation. Which foundation will carry more weight when the two meet in a case the judges have not yet decided? A society that holds both a holding on equality and a clause on preference has to keep weighing that, citizen by citizen and statute by statute.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Knesset pass the Nation-State Law, relative to Gavison’s recommendation?

The Knesset passed Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People on 19 July 2018 (Knesset, 2018). That was three years and eight months after Ruth Gavison submitted her recommendations on 19 November 2014, and about three years after their publication in February 2015 (Gavison, 2015). Her recommendation addressed timing, and the law was enacted later.

Who first applied “ethnic democracy” to Israel?

Sammy Smooha published the archetype statement in Israel Studies in 1997 (Smooha, 1997), but the concept was already in circulation. His own footnote 22 cites Oren Yiftachel’s 1993 article in Ethnic and Racial Studies, which examined the concept and its applicability to Israel. The 1997 article sets out the type in full. It is not the term’s first use.

Did Yiftachel coin the word “ethnocracy”?

No. Yiftachel’s own footnote 15 states that the term “has appeared in previous literature,” and cites Linz and Stepan (1996), Linz (1975) and Mazrui’s 1975 book on military ethnocracy (Yiftachel, 1999). His contribution was applying the category to Israel/Palestine and building it on three forces.

Which other states did Smooha classify as ethnic democracies?

Smooha (1997) names Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1972, Canada from 1867 to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Poland from 1918 to 1935, and Malaysia since the early 1970s, and he describes Germany as bordering on the type. The comparison places Israel in a category that, on his account, other states have also occupied.

Does either scholar call Israel an “ethnostate”?

No. The word “ethnostate” appears nowhere in Smooha’s 44-page 1997 article, and a full-text search of Yiftachel’s 1999 paper also finds it nowhere. Smooha uses “ethnic state” 16 times, but loosely and never as a defined category with criteria. The full text of Yiftachel’s 2006 book was not searchable for the term.

What did Montagu ask the Government to do instead?

On page 3 of his 23 August 1917 Cabinet paper, read from a relayed scan of the print, Montagu asked the Government to pledge “complete liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs,” and added, “I would ask that the Government should go no further” (Montagu, 1917). He proposed equal settlement rights rather than national status.

What is “egalitarian pluralism” in this literature?

Gila Stopler uses the phrase in a peer-reviewed 2013 article on religious establishment in Israel. She describes a model intended to reconcile Jewish public identity with equal rights, and argues that Israel’s liberal protections are only partially entrenched in law and often depend on judicial intervention (Stopler, 2013). The argument is normative, not a measurement.

Sources

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